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Good boy that I am, I finished my first draft for Sankalan two days before zero hour, only to be informed that the deadline’s been extended by two weeks. So to celebrate I’ve again decided to write a self-indulgent rant; even I’m not sure what shape this article will ultimately take.
People who have been kind enough to follow my audition ki kahaniyan, I’d just like to point out that since I last reported, I’ve done two more ads, taking the tally to four. I haven’t seen a single one yet, since we don’t watch TV at home. I did an ad for LG Music Systems, in which I was one of the guys playing guitar in the background. I think that one showed sometime during the ICL, but I dunno. The latest I acted in was for Big Bazaar’s special inaam-jeeto or something offer till the 31st of this …

I attended the two-day Indian Screenwriters’ Conference 2008, and to prove it, I have, apart from a bunch of notes and quotes, a small boil at the top corner of my left ass. The theme of this year’s conference, which was dedicated to the late Vijay Tendulkar, was “Has The Indian Script Arrived?” We had quite a formidable collection of speakers on the roster: Rakeysh Mehra, Kamal Hasan, Abbas Tyrewala, Navdeep Singh, Nasreen Munni Kabir, Amol Palekar, Prakash Jha, Jahnu Barua, Rajkumar Hirani, Abhijat Joshi, Govind Nihalani, Dr Jabbar Patel, Kamlesh Pandey, Amole Gupte, Vipul Shah, Imteyaz Hussain, Vinod Rangnath, Rajesh Dubey, Sriram Raghavan, Sridhar Raghavan, Sanjay Gadhvi, Rohan Sippy, Lekh Tandon, Onir, Atish Kapadia, Pubali Chaudhuri, Vinay Shukla, Ram Mirchandani…Among those who were scheduled but couldn’t make it were Anurag Kashyap, Ashutosh Gowarikar and Subhash Ghai. Also present in the audience were Vishal Bhardwaj, Piyush Mishra, Deepti Naval, Mita …

Script deadline panic is on my brain as I write this, but I felt like doing whatever little I could to promote a good movie. This is a conversation and dinner with Oye Lucky Lucky Oye’s Richa Chadda, who’s impressed everyone with her performance as Dolly. I was also the cook for the night at Richa and Radhika’s place, but I’ll come to that later. Apne PFC ke Vasan and Thani were also there for dinner.
And that reminds me, there is absolutely no objectivity in my interview because Richa’s a friend who’s done a great job in her first film and I’d like to introduce a worthy actress like her to a wider public. (Can’t remember now who it was, but someone had commented on PFC about non-actresses, “Why is it that Ms X and Ms Y and Ms Z and 27 other girls keep getting work again …

Om Puri. Boman Irani. Ranvir Shorey. Vinay Pathak. Vijay Maurya. Javed Jaffrey. In no particular order.
In celebration of my making it through to the next round of Sankalan, I’ve decided to write a nice self-indulgent piece about some of my favourite actors. The reason they’re my favourites is that for every character they play, they go into a lot of detail to create something new. A lot of actors just play themselves over and over again. Not so with these fine folk.

Om Puri

Bollywood Calling: I think I’ve watched and shown this film to others more than any other. “Baalls! Baalls! I want more baalls!” “Bastard I kill you.” “You have to feeeel…lusty.” “…like (y)anything.” What a killer accent! The first time I watched this movie, I forgot that Mr Om Puri isn’t South Indian. Anyone who hasn’t …

Batman Begins, The Bourne Ultimatum and now Quantum of Solace: movies in which the action’s been shot from so close and have such machine-gun angle-change editing that we have no idea what’s actually going on. This was the only flaw in Batman Begins, otherwise one of my ideal perfect films.
Burden of expectation is a very heavy thing to carry into a movie theater. I was never a Bond fan. I happened to watch Casino Royale only because the DVD was lying around. Remember the first 10 minutes with that amazing chase? That had me going, “Damn! This is fantastic!!!!…Now let’s see how this movie goes from here.” And it unfolded beautifully. The airport battle, the Vatican city sequence, the card-playing scenes, the poison antidote – I was surprised to find …

I still get the shudders when I think of my on-camera acting debut. This was back in Guwahati in 2005. I felt like committing filmy suicide on every day of the 21 day shoot. It was for 8 episodes of a serial commissioned for Doordarshan North-East.
The producer and director treated me very well, but alas, they were PhDs in GPD&S. GPD&S bole toh Gheesa Peeta Dialogue & Situations. But I’m grateful to them anyway; better learn when the stakes are still low.
I was the hero of the serial, which was a social drama about an honest young man who can’t find a job and gets incited into joining a militant outfit, till the cops catch him and give him dhan dhana dhan dhulai. His girlfriend then works to get him released. It’s a …

Why the blazes are people giving 2/2.5 ratings to Hulla? For me, it was an 8/10 movie. Hulla had me and even my NRI buddy laughing from start to finish, and it did so without insulting my intelligence, which is all I bloody ask of a movie. So why the bally hell are critics on their high horses and their ivory towers and their glass houses dishing out merely average ratings to such an entertaining film? If people can give Om Shanti Om four star ratings for sheer entertainment value, what keeps them from doing the same for Hulla, which had the whole audience I watched it with laughing throughout? I’m sure the ratings would have been higher if this movie had a big name attached to it. Films about the middle class are about as rare as moments of privacy on Big Boss, and …

I’m still running a slight fever as a write this – I have it since the last two days of the Sankalan workshop. The fever could either be due to an information overload or a food and tea overload. We, the dozen plus two chosen writers, were treated to luxury which at least I’m not used to. We’d be taken to the venue, Digital Academy, in an AC minibus, fed breakfast, have a session, then a tea break, then session, then lunch – session – tea break – session – and finally goodbye tea and snakes – I mean snacks. Our hostesses (cum bosses Anupama, Arti and Sushmita (more power to women!) declared that they intended to make us at least one or two kilos heavier by the end of the session. Unfortunately for me, who’s struggling to get rid …

In Shallow Hal, Anthony Robbins asks Jack Black, “Would you rather have a girl with half a brain or only one breast?” to which the reply is “Is this breast big?”
 I don’t really know why I wrote that. I was trying to think of a witty analogy to describe my feelings about Ugly Aur Pagli, because the Ugly half, Ranvir Shorey, is expectedly fantastic, whereas the Pagil half, Mallika Sherawat, falls waaaaayyyyyy short of angel-faced Gianna Jun, the heroine of My Sassy Girl.
 For those who don’t yet know, Ugly Aur Pagli is a remake of the Korean film My Sassy Girl, which happens to be one of my all-time favourites. I’m a big fan of the Korean rom-coms that …

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At last!!!!!!! I watched The Dark Knight on the date I�d been waiting for over more than two years now � July 18th 2008! Never have I been more overexcited at any movie before. From the moment I had the tickets in my hand in the morning I was restless the whole day. It felt like I was going to get laid after a 2 year drought or something.
�Boy did I love the film! Yes, the film IS worth all the hype, all the attention it�s got. Heath Ledger, may his soul rest in eternal peace, has done a Bruce Lee�/ Jim Morrison�/ Kurt Cobain. This is the stuff of legends � people …

At last, after about 8 auditions, I finally scored one � a TV ad for Godrej washing machine. The shoot was yesterday. Unfortunately, friends and family members trying to see me will have to watch with their fingers on the pause button. It’s not a blink-and-miss part I’m playing; it’s a miss-even-if-you-don’t-blink.
�I’d reached the audition for this ad at the fag end (no dirty jokes here please) of the second day, which was a good thing, ’cause a couple of my friends had been there on the first and they say it was obscenely crowded. After a roughly 10-15 minute look at what was going on, I played my part and did get smiles out of the casting lady and the other folks who’d come to audition. I never thought I’d get the part, and I didn’t, actually; they cast me in another part. I don’t know if they picked …

I don’t watch horror films ’cause I live alone. At least, that used to be my excuse for the last three years. I had a nice little 3-room first-floor pad all to myself for just 3500 bucks a month in Guwahati. Visitors always asked why I needed such a large place. Well, I couldn’t find a 2-room place in time, that’s all. Unfortunately, even in those days of living alone, I did end up watching quite a few horror films � Dhol, RGV Ki Aag, Buddha Mar Gaya, Fool �n� Final, etc.
I’ll never forget that I watched Bhoot in the very first row of 3 C’s in Lajpat Nagar, Delhi. I think it kind of masochistic to be a horror film fan. Personally, I …

I went for an audition last Sunday. Expecting a long journey and a long wait, I had a heavy lunch, followed by a tall glass of cold coffee to bolster myself up. I took bus number 459 to Mulund. It was a hot day � the rains hadn�t started then � so I had a glass of nimbu pani at the bus depot.
�My final destination was a short auto trip away, but within barely a minute of sitting in the auto, nature started calling � to its destination number two. This sometimes happens to me if I drink a significant amount of coffee or tea without having submitted my full daily quota to Mr Commode in the morning.
�The …